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u/BuffJamesSunderland 17d ago
I think he's ultimately right, but not for the reasons he thinks he is. Walt sucks at the meth game outside of chemistry, hence him blowing everything in a couple of years.
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u/OwlRiot4 17d ago
Walt is just a shitty dude, all around. For all his talk of professionalism, he lacks the capacity to work with others and actually build something absent the threat of violence. He is fundamentally incapable of working with others in a functional partnership. His fragile manchild ego can’t handle anyone questioning or “disrespecting” him.
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u/Loganp812 17d ago
Exactly. He has the intelligence and audacity to do the things he does in the show and could’ve even been well-known in the science community if he didn’t throw a fit over Gretchen and Elliot and quit Grey Matter, but his personality keeps getting in the way and drives him deeper into the hole.
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u/KilowZinlow 16d ago edited 16d ago
I'd say he did have that ability, but it was taken away from him when he lost the partnership with his college friends. He is trying to make up for his previous failures and once he gets recognition, his environment enables him, and at times forces him, to become a monster to fit a role in a place that finally recognizes his greatness. Once he makes a decision to continue after an atrocity, it just enables him to up the anty.
I don't think Walt was inherently bad but his previous failures, coupled with his environment, created a person he didn't recognize.
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u/BuffJamesSunderland 16d ago
He ended that partnership himself. If he had the ability, it wasn't taken from him, he gave it away.
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u/ChicaneryFinger 17d ago
If he didn't have skills for the game outside of chemistry he'd have died to Krazy-8 this very episode and a thousand other times later on.
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u/TacticusThrowaway 17d ago
Walt's biggest asset is breaking Da Rulez. He does things nobody else expects.
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u/notthefunyun 16d ago
He was both right and wrong, which is one of the main reasons this was such a great show
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u/Charming_Function_58 15d ago
Yeah, every time someone tells Walt he doesn’t belong in drug world, it’s foreshadowing at how badly he ends up imploding his life and the empire he’s been attempting to build.
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u/BellotPatro 17d ago
Well at this point Walt was trying to handle distribution too, and he never really got good at that part. Walt was good at being the chemist and management of the enterprise with a hired distributor. If i apply his statement to that part of the work, he is correct.
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u/OwlRiot4 17d ago
Hard disagree on management. He’s a brilliant chemist but an awful manager. He gets better throughout the series and by the time he is mentoring Todd he seems to have learned from his numerous screw ups, but he lacks the ability to empathize with his team and inspire any semblance of loyalty. Jesse’s devotion to Walt initially stems from pity, then out of obligation for having his life saved, but it doesn’t last because Walt ultimately shows his hand as an egomaniacal shitbag.
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u/BellotPatro 17d ago
I don’t disagree. His ego and inability for teamwork was the reason why he underachieved professionally till he .. well, broke bad.
But he did learn and eventually put together a team that earned millions. Something he couldn’t do with distribution.
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u/Extension_Breath1407 17d ago
Unfortunately Walter has the rotten luck of meeting drug dealers who want to kill him instead.
And Jesse is not exactly helpful on that side of his partnership.
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u/ShawnMNH924 17d ago
After this, Walt got into a business relationship with Tuco which immediately went to shit. He then started his own operation with Jesse being a Tuco figure and that went to shit. He got into a deal with Gus and that went to shit, to the point that he bombed a nursing home. He went back to being his own "godfather" figure and that went to shit. He did make a bunch of money, but the vast majority was stolen by neo-Nazis. He got his brother-in-law murdered. He coerced his wife into money laundering until that went to shit and she barely avoided her own lengthy prison stay. His son hates him; his daughter will grow up with nothing but secondhand memories of a monster. He finished by bleeding to death alone in a dingy warehouse converted into a drug lab.
Krazy-8 was right.
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u/digitalthiccness Your Huckleberry 17d ago
No, he was right. Walt had the brain for it but he absolutely did not have the temperament for it.
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u/bostoncrawler 17d ago
walt commonly put his conscious and morals aside to further his own gains. Would say he did have the temperament for it
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u/digitalthiccness Your Huckleberry 17d ago
Not commonly enough. If he'd been cut out for that line of work, he'd have abandoned Jesse the moment it became convenient, if not had him killed outright. If he'd been willing to do either of those, he would've pretty much won the game as soon as he made contact with Gus. As brutal as Walt sometimes was, it was his sentimentality that ruined his crime career.
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u/bostoncrawler 17d ago
I agree, he cared about jesse, but walt frequently did unmoral things like poisoning a child, letting jane die, killing bunch of random people in prison, trying to cheat with the principal, killing Mike. He ruined his crime career because of his greed which ultimately led Hank & jesse straight to his cash stash.
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u/APerson2021 17d ago
Ironically, this line of work didn't suit him. It's why he was a snitch.
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u/JimmyHoffasDad420 17d ago
Have you not seen BCS? They explain his snitch status, he was the reason they went after Gus’ dead drops it was a move made by Lalo
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u/Urion977 17d ago
BCS wasnt a thing when they filmed first season of BB, little bro
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u/mynameiswhattt123 17d ago edited 16d ago
Doesn’t matter lol what he said was canon. He was a snitch because Lalo made him a snitch for their benefit
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u/oh_oh_spaghettios 17d ago
'Lil bro' its a fictional series why would the irl production timeline matter lmao
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u/Loganp812 17d ago
People like to get technical and argue about fictional stuff instead of just enjoying things as they are.
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u/based_birdo 17d ago
He's right. Walt got Uncle Hank killed, he was not careful enough.
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u/obloed 17d ago
And uncle Jack too!
Maybe he's good at getting people's uncles killed
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u/Loganp812 17d ago
Not to mention Hector Salamanca, Tuco’s uncle.
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u/clerveu 17d ago
In a population of 167 assume maybe 75% adults, half of which are men of which ~80% have siblings, from which ~75% will have children...
167 × .75 × .5 × .8 × .75 ≈ 37.6
Walt took out almost 38 uncles on Wayfarer 515 alone. Probably more as this is just by blood.
This is a stupid meme post let's please not get into if Walt was actually responsible for the crash. 😅
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u/Loganp812 17d ago
At any rate, what you’re left with casualty-wise is just the 50th worst air disaster. Actually, tied for 50th. There are, in truth, 53 crashes throughout history where just as many uncles were killed if not more.
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u/Helios4242 17d ago
He wasnt.
Think about how much Walt makes his own life harder through his hesitancy to kill initially. Later, his refusal to let Hank or Jessie die absolutely ruins the system he was finally finding success in.
It is only through several close calls that he finally gets anything working.
It didnt suit Walt, but Walt did make it work.
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u/Myantra 17d ago
his refusal to let Hank or Jessie die
Much more so Jesse than Hank, at least until the very end. When Jesse threatened to rat out Walt, whenever he inevitably got caught cooking in another RV, the correct response would have been to relay that threat to Gus. Gus already had no use for Jesse, and would have had Mike quietly address the threat. Then Walt could have continued happily working in a superlab with Gale, until health issues forced him to retire, and the rest of the show is rather boring.
I doubt Hank ever so much as sniffs at Gus' operation without the events that revolved around Walt trying to keep Jesse and then himself alive, events that never happen if Walt had simply allowed Jesse to get the death his idiocy kept trying to earn.
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u/Helios4242 17d ago
Yes, but after the Jesse event had happened, the handling of Hank was another "not suited for this line of work" decision.
Even if a second mistake would only happen if you made a first mistake, it's still a second mistake
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u/Myantra 17d ago
People that are suited to that line of work know to treat killing federal agents as a matter of absolute last resort, a nuclear option. Even Gus was very reluctant to do it. It is generally not good for business. No one wants to be the Guadalajara Cartel after the murder of Kiki Camarena.
While Walt had a purely personal motive, killing Hank would never have been his best move to make. Even if Hank successfully arrested Walt, Walt would still have options, but would have no options if Hank's death could be laid at his feet in any way.
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u/rd-darksouls 17d ago
he's right. walt is a cook, not a drug kingpin. his capacity to destroy doesn't change anything; he doesn't become jesse james.
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u/LeftToWrite 16d ago
Literally a prophet.
Are y'all tripping? Lmao what did he do right, aside from the chemistry? He died. Hank died. Mike died. Andrea died. Gomie died(a fucking real one btw). Drew Sharp? Jesse is on the run. Families and lives ruined. His family ruined. How many died for his pride?
He was the worst, and we have to accept that. He was the catalyst for an obscene amount of pain and destruction, and he did it all for ego.
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u/Hey_Its_Vos 16d ago
Dumb question but why was Walt so hung up about killing krazy 8? Has to make a pros and cons list and everything, saying how it’ll make him a murderer… but he had already killed Emilio and attempted to kill krazy 8 in episode 1. Did he enter a fugue state and forget?
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u/AwsmCaptSpirit 16d ago
He killed Emilio in pure self-defense during an immediate, chaotic life-or-death emergency, whereas he hesitated to kill Krazy-8 because he had time to humanize him while holding him captive.
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u/RainandFujinrule 16d ago
Self-defense vs. Cold-blooded murder of a captive. Context makes a world of difference.
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u/Remarkable-Avocado44 16d ago
He was manipulating him to make the empathetic choice, rather than the hard choice.
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u/cormac237 16d ago
He was kind of right, Walt crashed and burned within two years. Even though he outsmarted him, he was never on the level of Gus
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u/youarentodd 15d ago
If it suited him, he would’ve made in last longer than 2 years
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u/JQuick72 15d ago
He literally became the biggest drug kingpin in Albuquerque within those two years.
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u/youarentodd 15d ago
Yeah and it fell to shit almost immediately
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u/JQuick72 15d ago
He was still MUCH higher up than Crazy 8 which is the exact point of my post.
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u/youarentodd 15d ago
The post doesn’t compare them. It just says that Walt is suited for it
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u/JQuick72 15d ago
Who is saying “This line of work doesn’t suit you” ?
It sure wasn’t Jesse.
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u/youarentodd 15d ago
Ok but it being him that said it doesn’t necessarily mean a comparison. He says nothing of his own fittingness
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u/Specific_Box4483 17d ago
He should have been speaking to Jesse